Dr. Gregg pulled up his trap and hailed the man who was stalking along
on the other side of the road.
"Are you going my way, Grierson? Can I give you a lift? Right. Whoa,
mare, stand still. It's some time since I saw you, Grierson. Been away?"
Jimmy, who was already climbing into the dog-cart, did not answer until
the question was repeated, then, "Yes," he said rather unwillingly.
"I've been over to Paris for two or three days."
The doctor drew his ragged-looking grey eyebrows down until they formed
almost a straight line. "The old game," he growled.
The young man was staring away over the hedge at the sweep of country
beyond, and replied without looking round. "Yes, as you say, the old
game--the inevitable game, if you like that better. The only difference
being that it was liqueur brandy this time instead of whisky."
"Silly fool." The doctor was not noted for his gentle speech. "Silly
fool, you know what I told you, that it means death in your case, with
perhaps a spell of lunacy first--that is, if you're not really a lunatic
already. You had better get some other medical man to attend you next
time." He slashed at an overhanging bough with his frayed old whip, and
apparently the action relieved him, for he went on in a very different
voice, "How's the book getting on? Is it published yet?"
"It's coming out next week," Jimmy answered. "I got an advance copy
to-day. They've bound it and made it up rather nicely."
The doctor nodded. "So they ought to. It's good stuff, but you would
never have written it at all if it hadn't been for me." The thought
seemed to bring back his grievances, for he went on querulously, "Why do
you always go to Paris or Brussels or some place like that? Can't you
find enough bad liquor and bad company in London, at far less cost?"
Jimmy flushed. "Look here, Gregg," he began angrily, then broke off with
a bitter laugh. "I suppose I've no right to take offence at you, after
all. I never go to London, haven't been there for a year, I loathe the
place."
"Bad memories, eh?" The doctor jerked the words out as he guided his
horse past a big dray.
"Bad memories," Jimmy assented wearily. "The worst of bad memories."
"That's the advantage of being a medical man." They had just passed the
dray and were coming to the outskirts of the little country town. "We
understand what it means, you see, and when a woman lets us down, we
don't make it worse, as you are doing. Oh, I know you didn't say
anything about a woman, but I know, too, that you meant one. It's a poor
compliment to her if she's any good, and if she isn't, why worry?"
Jimmy did not answer, and the doctor changed the subject abruptly, as
was his way. "Did they tell you that Drylands, the big house close to
your cottage, was let at last? You'll have some society now. I hear
they're people who entertain a lot."
"What is their name?" Jimmy demanded.
"Something not unlike your own--Grimston, I think."
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. "Never heard of them, and, anyway, it
probably wouldn't affect me. The neighbourhood as a whole hasn't exactly
tumbled over itself in its anxiety to make my acquaintance."
"That's your own fault," the doctor retorted. "You haven't given the
neighbourhood much encouragement to know you, although you would be
welcome enough. You're a surly brute in many ways, Grierson."
"Thanks," Jimmy answered with a hard laugh. "At least you're outspoken.
And now this is my destination, the news agent's shop. I'll try to
follow your professional advice--for as long as I can."
The doctor grunted something unintelligible and drove on. It was market
day, and there were several farmers he wanted to interview before the
excitement, or the local ale, or a combination of both, rendered their
ideas a little more vague than at ordinary times.
* * * * *
It was a year since Jimmy had taken the cottage a mile outside the
sleepy little town. He had gone there in the first place because it was
far removed from everyone and everything he knew, and in some ways the
experiment had proved a success. The deaf old woman who came in to do
his cooking and housework worried him little, and apparently did not
gossip about his actions or his habits; whilst the three rooms he had
furnished were more than sufficient for his needs.
At first, on hearing of Joseph Fenton's legacy, he had thought of going
abroad again, of seeking oblivion of the past few months in travel and
excitement; but a chance remark of May's spoken at Joseph Fenton's
funeral, the only occasion on which he had met any of the Griersons
since the interview at Walter's office, had shown him that the family
would welcome his departure, that it even regarded voluntary exile as
the proper course for him to take under the circumstances, and, if only
for that reason, he determined to stay. Probably he would have stayed in
any case, for, though he had cut himself adrift from Lalage, had never
seen her since she left London, and heard from her but seldom--brief,
gentle little notes which invariably made him break his promise to
her--all the old wild jealousy remained. It was torture whilst he was in
England, but he felt it would mean madness if there were the ocean
between them. His love for her was dead, or at least he told himself so,
that part of love which comes from the joy of possession, which brings
with it peace and courage, and a good comrade in the never-ending
struggle against fate; but the other part, the fear and the hopelessness
and the fever, remained with him always.
Once, and once only, he had had Lalage watched. He had lain awake night
after night until his jealousy had culminated in his sending down a
private detective. He had read the report--which was wholly in her
favour, even the church working party of the village in which she was
living being unable to rake up any charge against her--with an
unutterable sense of shame and self-contempt, and then had thrust it
hurriedly into the fire; but instead of bringing him peace it gave him
another memory to brood over, and at times to try and drown.
Lalage's fears had only been too well founded. The locality was healthy
enough, the doctor had said with almost brutal frankness the first time
Jimmy had occasion to consult him; and then he had gone on to diagnose
his patient's case without mincing his words.
"You don't show it outwardly, at least not to a layman, but any medical
man would see what was the matter with you. What makes you drink?"
Jimmy had shrugged his shoulders, half-ashamed, half-irritated. "Habit,
I suppose," he had answered, whereupon the other had growled.
"A confoundedly bad and stupid habit. The sooner you get some new ones
the better. You write, don't you? How do you expect to make a success of
it when you're sapping your brain power in this fool's way?"
He had added a few more things, pointed and true, but none the less they
had parted good friends, and for a time Jimmy tried to fight his enemy,
remembering his promise to Lalage; but it was always the same in the
end. His black hour would come on him, and he would recall his great
treason, and tell himself bitterly that she had been the first to set
the example in the matter of broken faith.
Whatever fears May might have had on the point--and the matter certainly
had worried her a good deal during the last twelve months--there had
never been any question of Jimmy going back to Lalage. True, he had
broken away from the Grierson tradition when he went to live at the
flat, had thrown that tradition to the winds, but still he had never
repudiated it openly, and in the end if he had not actually gone back to
his own people, at least he had recognised that the standards of his own
people were right. He was ashamed of himself, even more ashamed of
Lalage. He saw his conduct--and hers--in its true light, its stupidity,
and its immorality, and in the days following Joseph Fenton's death he
had reached the nadir of contrition and misery, and would have made
confession, and sought for absolution, had the family given him the
chance. He was in the mood for it, being run-down and broken-hearted.
But Joseph's death had altered the focus of things for the moment,
making Jimmy's affairs a secondary consideration, and after the reading
of the will, Joseph's legacy had effectually destroyed any hope of
peace, at least as far as Ida was concerned. Fenton had left, it is
true, nearly a hundred thousand to his wife, but the odd thousand to
Jimmy almost neutralised the generosity of his other bequests, at least
in Ida's sight, and Ida's personality dominated the whole family for the
time being.
Curiously enough, no one knew of Jimmy's last meeting with Joseph. At
first Jimmy had held his peace about it, not wishing in any way to add
to Ida's troubles; then, when he found that his own misdeeds were
supposed to have preyed on his brother-in-law's mind and hastened his
death, he continued to keep silence, in a kind of savage contempt. He,
at least, knew what Joseph's feelings had been, and all his sympathy and
all his regrets were for the dead man, and not for the saint, who, after
the manner of her kind, had understood nothing and forgiven nothing.
Yet, none the less, he would gladly have made peace with the family,
just as May and Walter would have made peace with him, had Ida's
bitterness not rendered that so hard as to be almost impossible. She was
too good a woman to overlook his sin, or to allow anyone else to
overlook it. She believed in the punishment of the sinner, not in his
pardon, and she did not think that Jimmy had suffered enough; possibly
she believed that he had not suffered at all, for had he not in the end
received a thousand pounds which should, by rights, have gone to her own
children? So, though he had repudiated Lalage to pacify his people,
and--it must be admitted also--to satisfy his own conscience, his only
reward had been a ghastly sense of isolation, both from his own world,
where the Grierson tradition rules, and from that other world into which
he had strayed for a few short never-to-be-forgotten months.
Jimmy had turned a little grey during the last year, and the boyish
charm had gone out of his face. Alas! he had grown careless as regarded
his appearance, and he had ceased to trouble about a number of little
things on the observance of which Lalage had once insisted. He never
worried as to whether his boots were cleaned or no, and he only shaved
when he was going into the little town. After all, what did it matter?
He had no friends, and he wanted none; society, or at any rate women's
society, had ceased to be a factor in his life.
On the other hand, success had come to him professionally, though it
meant very little to him, or very little compared with what it would
have meant in the London days, when half the income he was making now
would have seemed wealth. Joseph's legacy had allowed him breathing
space. He had quitted Fleet Street finally, abandoned all thought of
journalism, and gone in for the writing of short stories. Some quality
in the latter, possibly the cynical outlook on life which coloured them
all, caught the fancy of editors accustomed to the milk-and-water
optimism of the average writer, and in a few months his work was not
only selling, but was actually in demand. Moreover, he had written a
novel, and, his luck still holding good, had placed it with the second
publisher to whom he offered it; but even that success had given him no
sense of elation; and, when he had come to read the proofs, he had found
himself wishing that he had put the manuscript into the fire. It was not
the book he had dreamed of doing, the book he had so often discussed
with Lalage. The doctor, who had also seen the proofs, thought highly of
it; the publisher was urging him to get on with another; but he,
himself, knew well that the book lacked something. He had been afraid to
give it life by drawing on his own experience. He had been so anxious
not to widen the breach with his family that he had ended by writing a
novel for Griersons. As Jimmy walked homewards after his meeting with
the doctor, he found himself wondering what Lalage would think of his
novel, whether she would feel pride, or grief, or contempt. Somehow,
although she had no part in his life now, he was more afraid of her
judgment than of that of anyone else. "Lalage's author," she had called
him in the old days, and she had always believed in him. "I know you
will write nice books for Lalage, by and by; because you're very, very
clever"--she had said so more than once, when he had seemed to be losing
heart over his work in the _Record_ office. And now he had written the
book--in which Lalage had had no part. Unconsciously, he quickened his
pace, as if to get away from the thought, and, perhaps for that reason,
he did not notice a motor-car which was coming up behind him. When the
horn was sounded, he merely drew into the hedge and did not look round.
The car passed him, slowly on account of a flock of sheep which was
coming out of a gate a little way ahead, and he noted, without the
slightest sense of interest, that there were a couple of well-dressed
women in the tonneau; consequently, he was greatly surprised when one of
the women called to the driver to stop, then looked back, and beckoned
excitedly to himself.
"Mr. Grierson, Mr. Grierson--Jimmy!" she cried.
As he came up, she raised the heavy veil she was wearing, and he found
himself looking into the laughing eyes of Ethel Grimmer.